Escape From Alcatraz
by NiGhTmArEHuNtErx
Summary: The survivors had it envisioned that the isolated prison would be their sanctuary. Instead, it will become a raging battle for survival, fighting against the unstoppable horde of mutated infected, facing old foes and unfamiliar faces. Chapters added regularly, thanks for reading.
1. Alcatraz Awaits

"You sure that this is going to be a sanctuary?" Nick gave a grunt as he jumped from the boat to the harrowed docks, smeared with blood and the dampened smell of despair.

"Of course," Zoey grinned, nodding towards the captain who began to spin the damaged boat in the opposite direction, "We're in the middle of the ocean, what could possibly go wrong?" Uncertain, Nick glanced downwards to the massacred remains of whoever used to live here.

"And this blood belongs to whom, then?"

"It's old, dried; probably from before the apocalypse," Coach chipped in, "We'll be safe. And if not, Bill's comin' back soon with more survivors, if we find ourselves in danger, we'll leave when he returns on the boat. Now c'mon, let's not stand around 'ere freezing off our arses."

The six of them began to head onwards into the entrance of the west prison block, each clutching their weapons tightly, relaxed yet increasingly cautious. Leading the huddle, Coach prised open the bolts which secured the heavy, metal door, and edged it open with a determined scowl. Darkness greeted them with arms outstretched, pulled them inwards into the unknown. And that's how it began, no going back now. This would be their sanctuary.

Torches ablaze, with beams of light slicing through the black in all directions, they began to advance, eying up the abandoned cells and upturned furniture sprawled across the elongated hallways. Whilst the silence was unnerving, Ellis found it somehow comforting to be lacking the hysterical screeches of hunters or the sorrowing sobs of witches. All he could remember was the anarchy that the survivors had to deal with, battling to stay alive in a world dominated by the infected. For years, the group had barely managed to do so, by voyaging around the globe in search of safe rooms, survivors, supplies and the ultimatum of rescue. All of which seemed increasingly hard to do, it took Nick, Coach, Rochelle and Ellis three years to unite with Zoey and Bill, both of whom were found in an abandoned shopping mall. Teaming up and successfully finding a boat, luckily with fuel, they turned their attention to finding a permanent haven. Where better than an isolated prison in the middle of an ocean. Alcatraz.

"I do hope that Bill finds them…" Zoey murmured, breaking the silence which had imprisoned the survivors.

"Finds who?" Rochelle glanced over, puzzled.

"Our teammates; Francis and Louis. We got separated on our journey to the Prospect Shopping Mall… We were attacked by a pack of hunters, parted ways, ran… We hoped to meet up at the mall. And when I arrived, I was alone. After a day of running, I was alone," Zoey gave a solemn sigh, "Bill thankfully arrived the next morning, exhausted and battered, but alive. The others? We don't know what happened to them…"

"I'm sure they'll be okay," Coach smiled sadly, and turned to face the room which they had stumbled upon. It was a large dining area, tables upturned and scattered, cutlery dotted randomly across the tiled, rubble floor. "I reckon we should stay here for tonight."

Nick rolled out their sleeping bags, drew out water bottles and handed them out evenly, allowing everyone to rehydrate. Zoey passed a packet of crackers around. They had only a limited amount of supplies until Bill returned with more, and hopefully the remaining two members of their old group. "Here's to a new start," she grumbled through crunches, "and to the future!"

Ellis grinned and nodded in agreement. Finally, they were safe. Contented, the survivors settled down in their bags and dropped off into sleep – the first time in a long time, they'd been able to safely relax. Within an hour, everybody except Ellis had dropped off into sleep. Ellis, on the other hand, found himself intrigued by his surroundings, with a desire to explore them. Grabbing an axe and a flashlight, he crept softly out of the dining room and down along the narrow passage to his right.

Destroyed and distraught, the cells weren't too pleasing or bolstering, yet something seemed to draw Ellis further and further from their camp site, driven by an unstoppable force which told him to investigate deeper. Within minutes, he found himself lost in the darkness, stumbling like a vulnerable child separated from their parents. Keep calm, he hissed to himself, can't be too hard to find your way back. If only he knew the truth. After an hour of stumbling, and a torch without any battery power, Ellis had resorted to feeling around with his hands, terrified. The silence tore into his flesh, making his hairs stand up on end, his blood run cold in his body.

His hand grasped a door, which he managed to peel open without much force. And inside the room, he could see the silhouettes of his surroundings; a small barred window guided the moonlight in gently but surely. Once his eyes adjusted, he noticed her. She sat, crunched up, on the upper bunk of a bed, rocking slightly.

"Hello?" He called gently, softly, scared to speak to loud in case he startled her, "Are you lost like me?" She gave a stiff nod, but continued to rock back and forth slowly, humming serenely to herself. "We can find our way back together, there are more of us. Is there more of you?"

The girl turned, her face buried in solitude and darkness, and again, she nodded. Ellis could barely distinguish her features, but her darkened, drowned eyes were clearly visible. She'd obviously been crying alone in the shadows for a long time. "It's okay, come here, I'll help…" He outstretched his arms in her direction, and she began to hold out her arms. Then he noticed the claws. It was at this point that Ellis stumbled backwards, mouth ajar, a low rasping scream in his throat.

Witch.


	2. The Chaple

UNFORTUNATELY I DO NOT OWN L4D OR L4D2, IF I DID I WOULD BE MAKING A SEQUEL AND A FILM, HOWEVER DUE TO THE FACT THAT I DON'T OWN THEM, I'M WRITING A FANFICTION. THEREFORE, MOST CHARACTERS BELONG TO VALVE :) Thanks for reading.

His heart throbbed, screaming with anguish, as he rocketed down the darkened hallways, seemingly endless, and winding like a maze. He dared not stop until he found the rest of his team, despite his lungs constricting, legs wavering and heart pounding into his ribs. Sweat poured down his face, but he did not slow down. He was perfectly aware of how dangerous witches were, and the consequences of disturbing one. Was she even real? Was he hallucinating? Was it the darkness, the twisted psychological despair of Alcatraz?

"ELLIS!"

Ellis stammered to a halt, doubled over, wheezing, while Rochelle and Nick ran to his side. Unable to speak or even produce an audible sound, he continued to pant, body trembling.

"What you playing at?" Coach boomed, striding over with his arms folded tightly across his chest, "Imagine if you got completely lost, we'd never find you!" Rochelle sat him down, wiped his sweaty brow with a tissue and knelt beside him inquisitively.

"W-Witch…" He uttered, still desperately trying to catch his breath, "Th-ther-res a w-witch…"

"Witch, where?"

"D-Don't know…" Ellis glanced upwards, "I-in a … c-c-cell." His head fell, cap covered his reddened face. The rest of the survivors shared a concerned glance, doubtful yet precautious, yet made no immediate response. They too considered the fact that the darkness and scars of the place could have caused delusions on such a fragile mind. Alcatraz was a place for the mentally deranged, the psychologically impaired, and the dark souls who trespassed on the Earth; obviously the nature and past of the prison were disturbing to the survivors. Tired and knackered, and refusing to allow his memory to repeat his encounter, Ellis curled into a tight ball, let out an elongated sigh, and drifted into sleep, head nodding slightly.

"Do you think there was a witch?" Zoey whispered, shuffling away from the sleeping teenager.

"No," Coach interrupted, in a firm and definitive tone, as if trying to persuade not only Zoey, but himself, "Nothing could have survived here. It doesn't matter what food takes your fancy, the point is that all organisms require food to live. A witch requires humans. There have been no humans here since the 1960s."

Zoey and Rochelle nodded with forced smiles, and sat down together, slowly. Coach was right, the prison was abandoned, no infected could travel such a distance without a purpose or a meal, two things Alcatraz lacked, and this only insinuated further that the likelihood of hostiles inhabiting Alcatraz was slim. Ellis had described finding a witch in a cell, as if an accidental discovery, unusual considering the usual behaviour of the illusive demonic females, with her blood-curdling sobs ringing out on a large radius. If a witch was nearby, they'd all have certainly heard her by now. Safe, perhaps, but Rochelle couldn't help feel pity towards Ellis. With him being the youngest member of their group, she'd always claimed the mothering role, ever since finding him at the age of 15, vulnerable, in an abandoned airport, struggling to keep ahold of his life with limited food and an axe for a weapon. She'd been relatively young herself at the time, just 23, but had already advanced in the skills of survival and had gained more experience with the infected. She instantly warmed to the innocent teenager, who appeared abandoned by civilisation. The two paired up, vowed to protect each other's backs until the end of the apocalypse or death, which ever came last.

Not long after they'd managed to return into their earlier state of sleep, the sun had dragged its way glumly into the sunken sky, whilst the moon evanesced peacefully beyond the horizon. With an elapsed yawn, Nick shuffled from his sleeping bag, outstretched his arms and squinted aimlessly through the seeping darkness; the limited rays of morning sun scarcely increased the amount of visibility, though they had slightly warmed the previously icy atmosphere. He secured himself a tin of tuna, and engulfed the contents within seconds.

"Greedy bitch," Zoey chuckled, shimmying to his side and claiming her own breakfast of dried fruit, whilst tipping a sachet of instant coffee powder into a flask of water.

"What can I say; a guy's gotta eat," Nick laughed, stirring the coffee mixture with the tip of his finger, "Oh the joys of cold, tasteless coffee…"

"…Oh the joys of your cold, tasteless sarcasm." Zoey raised her eyebrow, and slid the drink away from him, "Don't like it, don't drink it, it's pretty simple mate." She gently raised the flask lid to her lips and carefully withdrew a small amount of 'coffee' with a slightly disgusted face, whilst receiving an expression from Nick which implied 'I told you so'.

"Say nothing," She chuckled, returning the cap to the flask.

"Morning," Ellis stumbled slowly towards the supply pile and took a seat beside Nick, "I apologise for last night, I'm an idiot, I really am."

"You don't need to remind us, kid." Nick shrugged his shoulders, "Did you really see a witch?"

"Well," Ellis paused, closed his eyes and entered the network of memory, "I thought she was human, she didn't cry or sob, just embraced the solitude in which she sat in. Man, she even reached out for help. Then I noticed the elongated claws, her glimmering red eyes. I've never been so scared and confused in my entire life."

"You obviously haven't experienced much then, kid," Nick rolled his eyes, "Anyway, that's impossible. We're safe here, stop panicking and WALKING OFF BY YOURSELF."

"Well SORRY!" Ellis snarled, "Not my problem I'm stuck with lousy company..."

"Ellis," Rochelle soothed, "Calm down, if you want we can go for a walk?"

Ellis nodded, clambered to his feet, shot Nick a hateful glare, and waltzed out the dinning room with his head held high. Rochelle skipped after him, after carefully arming herself with a shotgun and a machete in which she intended for Ellis' useage. And together, they vanished into the serenade of shadows of harrowing hallways, desolate cells and the seemingly hungry unknown. "Do you recognise any of this?" Rochelle questioned.

"No, it was too dark," he sighed, "But I know what I saw. There really was somebody there, and it really was a witch... I know it. I really..."

"Let's just hope that it WASN'T a witch, I'm quite enjoying our mini-break from the infected." She uttered a feeble laugh, and took the lead. She found it unbelievable that anybody, prisoner or not, could have kept ahold of their excuse of life, fumbling around in such an isolated wasteland of darkness and despair. Having no contact with the outer world, it would have been in comparison to a mentalist asylum, mistreated and detached. It was a thought that made her feel grateful of the life she'd had, which she longed s badly to be reliving.

Guess I gotta realise that this is my life now, she thought with a crumbling heart, and all that matters is maintaining mine and my friends' lives.

"Rochelle!" She snapped out of her thought process, shook her head before returning to reality and realising where she was. Before her sparkling green eyes stood the crumbled, massacred remains of a chaple, the elegant architecture had been annihilated, the once beautiful glass designs lay spread in shards across the ground, dried blood smeared across the delicate edges.

"Odd..." Ellis took a slow step forwards, narrowly avoiding the piles of rubble and destruction, "What could have caused something like this... I don't suppose it would have merely collapsed..."

"What are you suggesting?" Rochelle slowly squatted, ran her finger across a smudge of blood and rubbed the dry, crimson grains between her forefinger and thumb, "Whatever happened, there were most definitely casualties."

"It just doesn't add up... Abandoned since 1963, if this religious sentiment had fallen in the period of prisoners, it would have been repaired, implying it happened AFTER 1963. But..." Ellis cringed, "It's a bloody massacre-"

"Without the bodies..." The pair exchanged a glance of pure uncertainty, breathing was slurred and slow, Rochelle could feel her legs begin to waver. She tried to accumulate a logical explanation of what event could have occurred. An accidental collapse? Not likely, the damage and corruption appeared to extreme to be caused by an architectural failure, and the blood insinuated only a deliberate disaster or massacre. With a trembling voice, standing to her feet, Rochelle turned to Ellis and whispered...

"What the HELL happened here?"


End file.
